Present discourse on Indigenous engagement in museum stories is usually ruled by way of curatorial and educational views, within which neighborhood voice, viewpoints, and reflections on their collaborations may be under-represented. This booklet offers a distinct examine Indigenous views on museum neighborhood engagement and the method of self-representation, particularly how the 1st international locations Elders of the Blackfoot Confederacy have labored with museums and history websites in Alberta, Canada, to symbolize their very own tradition and heritage.

From the front the head is wider than and therefore made distinct from the neck by the presence of carved ears. , fig. 3)—and often a short, straight mouth add interest and character to the representation. The top of the head tends also to be broad, in contrast to the often tapered “prong” of the Neolithic archetype. When it is rather straight across the top, a cylindrical headdress (polos), also rooted in the Neolithic, is to be understood. This is sometimes further defined by a continuous or an interrupted horizontal groove that marks its lower boundary (pl.

5. 9 cm 11 BEFORE THE ARMS WERE FOLDED are highly decorative and effectively focus the viewer’s attention, much as the special pattern of grooves does. Not coincidentally perhaps, the violin figure illustrated in plate 7b has two sets of horizontal grooves on the front—one where the arms are to be understood, the other on the lower torso, where one would expect such grooves. 19 Looking at the little-known Plastiras figures illustrated in the plates, one cannot help but notice the great variety from piece to piece, even though each one is also quite true to type.

It is worth noting that, like the Plastiras figures before them, very few precanonical figures have survived with their legs intact. All the works in plates 15–17, for example, have at some point in time sustained fractures to both carefully modeled legs. On nearly all of them, the breaks occurred at or just below where they are separated. 2 cm Fig. 13. , pls. 11, 12a, 15b);47 besides these, most figures with missing legs probably also broke earlier rather than later. Having compromised already by separating the legs only as far as the knees or slightly higher, instead of to the crotch, as the sculptors of the vulnerable Plastiras figures did, the craftsmen who fashioned precanonical images appear to have been loath to give up leg separation, even though they must certainly have recognized its hazards.